Firewhisky
by sheriden
Summary: The war was more than anyone had expected. Ginny drinks Firewhisky. Draco can’t stand the stuff. Ginny dies. Draco lives. And the war continues. Oneshot.


**Title:** Firewhisky

**Author:** Sheriden

**Summary:** The war was more than anyone had expected. Ginny drinks Firewhisky. Draco can't stand the stuff. Ginny dies. Draco lives. And the war continues. One-shot.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing but the plot. The rest belongs to the genius of J.K. Rowling.

**A/N:** Just so you don't get confused, Harry defeated Voldemort, but there really wasn't much difference, because the war with the Death Eaters still continued, and they were getting stronger, and certain members of the Order got a bit desperate…

And, the time period goes from the present to the past, then back to the present, and we move on from there. You'll know it's the present when they're back in the graveyard. Okay. That's enough info. On to the story.

---

It was funny, really, Draco thought over his bottle of whisky.

Whisky. He almost burst into laughter right there. _Whisky_. It was fucking hilarious. So hilarious, in fact, that he threw the bottle with all his might, and it shattered against some Muggle's gravestone. Shattered into a thousand glittering pieces. Glittering like the teardrops that fell from the sky.

"What a waste of good alcohol," said a voice. Quiet. Tired. The visitor settled next to Draco, though still a good distance away.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Draco snapped, although that was the very question he wanted to ask himself.

"She was nine when she first tried the stuff," the visitor said in response. He smiled wistfully. "Someone brought it out for Christmas and forgot to put it away. Poor thing thought it was pumpkin juice. Next thing she knows, she's coughing up flames." He laughed.

And Draco laughed. Because he had done the very same thing. Because he could picture her breathing fire. Like a dragon. She had been more of a dragon than he had ever been. Draco, not a dragon. He snorted at the irony of it all. Then he was laughing again, great peals of laughter shaking his body, until the laughter turned to tears and he sobbed into the earth that was Ginny Weasley's grave.

And Ronald Weasley sighed and gazed at the dying sun with his unseeing blue eyes.

---

"Weasley! Keep it _down_!" Draco roared from the sitting room, but the only thing he got in response was the sound of a glass being slammed onto the wooden table.

He had been rereading the same sentence of his morning paper for the twentieth time – something about Florean Fortescue introducing a popular new flavor – but the only thing he could comprehend was the fact that Ginny Weasley was drinking Firewhisky for breakfast. Again.

There was a _clink_, a _glug_, then another _smash_. With a tremendous sigh, he threw down the _Daily Prophet_ and stomped to the kitchen.

She paid him no attention. Instead, she smashed the glass onto the table with so much force that it cracked. But she didn't seem to notice. She filled the glass to the top with the golden red liquid that was Firewhisky. Then she drank it. Then slammed the glass. Then repeated. Repeated until the glass finally shattered into a thousand glittering pieces. Glittering like the blood that was covering her hand. More blood was welling up in the cut on her cheek. She grabbed another glass and continued to drink, paying her injuries no attention.

He couldn't figure out her problem. Was she upset over Potter? Was she upset because _he_ was here? Whatever her problem was, she had been drinking ever since he first came here a month ago, and didn't seem to know how to stop.

She drank until Draco could take it no longer. He stalked over to the table, snatched the almost empty bottle of Firewhisky away from her, and downed the contents himself – for the first time. The bottle was dropped. The table was singed. Draco was coughing fit to die, flames and sparks erupting from his throat, and Ginny was laughing as if she would never laugh again.

---

"No," Draco said firmly, in a tone that invited no further argument.

But that didn't stop Ginny from arguing. "Yes," she insisted, and flung the glass of Firewhisky across the table.

Draco stopped it with his hands. The red-gold liquid sloshed onto his sleeves, singeing the green fabric. Draco slapped away the flames. "No," he said again, and slid the glass back over.

Ginny rolled her eyes and seized the glass, draining the slightly smoking beverage in one gulp. "Funny," she said, not sounding amused at all. "I thought blood and Firewhisky were the Malfoy staples."

"Malfoys are dark wizards, not vampires or alcoholics," Draco snapped irritably.

"Right. Dark wizards. What the hell's a dark wizard like you doing in the Order Headquarters?"

That was the question nobody asked. And nobody really knew the answer either. "I don't know."

"Let me guess. You ran away?" Ginny asked bluntly.

"No," Draco snapped, looking irritable again. "I came on a broomstick," he declared in the most regal manner he could manage.

Ginny nodded. "And what better place to run – excuse me, _fly_ away to than the Order Headquarters? Because," she spat, her tone suddenly bitter, "the bloody _Headquarters_ is where everyone goes to be neutral." She snorted mightily. "All the people that don't want to fight, or _can't_ fight get sent here. Some 'Headquarters of the Light' this is. Might as well be Switzerland." She took another swig of her beloved beverage.

"Would you like to go there with me?" Draco asked suddenly, not particularly sure why he was asking this, to Ginny Weasley, of all people. "To Switzerland?"

Ginny raised an eyebrow. "If you hadn't turned down every glass of Firewhisky I've been offering you, I'd say you were drunk."

"We could get away from it all," Draco continued. "The war –"

"No one," Ginny interrupted, "can get away from the war. Switzerland won't be able to protect us."

"But –"

"Have a glass of Firewhisky, Malfoy. While you still can."

Draco scowled. "What do you mean 'while I still can'? Plan on killing me anytime soon?"

"That's not what I meant. You're not going to die, Malfoy." Ginny filled another glass, and drank it down. "But the Firewhisky is." She got up and left with the bottle, but not before pouring Draco a glass.

Draco sat, staring glumly at the glass, but with no intention to drink what was in it.

He hadn't understood back then. He had thought she was spouting some drunken nonsense. But now, now it made so much sense that it hurt.

---

"What the hell are you doing here?" Ginny screamed. "This is _Harry's_ house!"

She hurled her empty glass at him, and he caught it deftly. She was drunk. Ginny usually seemed immune to alcohol, but sometimes she drank so much that even her brain shut down.

"How dare you set foot in Harry's house, you stinking Death Eater!"

She threw another glass. And another. And a series of ice cubes. A rather large and empty bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhisky. A spoon. And a salt shaker. And another empty bottle. She would give up in time. He had been, after all, Hogwarts' second-best Seeker.

Another bottle. Three? That should have been enough to out a mountain troll, but Ginny consumed Firewhisky like a fire consumed gasoline. "Bastard! Bastard! _Bastard_!"

The entire drawer of cutlery was dumped over his head. That had never happened before. How many bottles did she drink?

"Bastard," she sobbed, collapsing on the floor.

Draco walked over to her, ignoring his injuries. "Who?" he asked softly.

"Harry, for leaving me. Ron, for leaving me. Hermione, Mum, Dad, _everyone_, for leaving me. And you! You, for _not_ leaving me! I can't stand the sight of you!" She hurled another empty Firewhisky bottle at his head. He knocked it out of the air, and it shattered again the wall. For some reason, his heart – the one he never knew he had – shattered with the bottle. "Bloody, filthy, fucking _Death Eater_!"

Draco knelt down in front of her and grasped her shoulders, looking directly into her eyes. "Not anymore," he hissed.

Ginny glared back, then muttered something incomprehensible and buried her head in his shoulder. A half-empty bottle of regular Muggle whisky stood alone on the table as Draco picked Ginny up and carried her out of the mess.

---

He watched her sleeping. Her hair was precisely the golden red color of Firewhisky. If the drink were somehow converted into threads of silk, Ginny would have Firewhisky for hair. Draco twirled a fiery strand around his finger and was almost surprised that it didn't burn.

The other surprising thing was that he was here, sitting next to Ginny Weasley's bed, twirling her hair. He had no idea why he was doing this. He had no idea why he was moving closer to her, leaning in, breathing in the spicy scent of Firewhisky that had become a part of Ginny. Then she stirred, and the spell was broken. Draco resumed his normal position as she opened her eyes.

"How are you feeling?"

"A Malfoy asking after a Weasley? What is the world coming to?" she scoffed, rubbing her eyes. "I'm fine. Sore stomach. Nothing a glass of Firewhisky won't cure. What happened to your face?"

"Flying fork."

"What?"

"I was attacked by a flying fork."

Ginny just stared.

"Don't worry about it."

"I won't. Fetch me some Firewhisky, will you?"

"A Weasley commanding a Malfoy? What is the world coming to?" Draco asked, and fetched her a bottle of Butterbeer.

---

Ginny shoved off the covers and sat upright in her squeaky bed. Draco glared disdainfully at Ginny's arm, which was bleeding through multiple layers of bandages, and Ginny glared disdainfully at the glass of pumpkin juice that was being held up in her face. "What is this?"

"Pumpkin juice," Draco replied matter-of-factly.

"And what do you want me to do with it?"

"Drink it."

Ginny shook her head stubbornly and said, "Firewhisky."

"No."

"Firewhisky."

"Not until you tell me what you were up to."

"Firewhisky."

Draco shoved the glass of pumpkin juice into her bandaged hands. "It has Blood-Replenishing Potion in it. Merlin knows why you need it, even if I don't. Drink it." He walked out the door, slamming it shut behind him.

---

"Don't even think about it."

"It's the last bottle. I wanted to share it with you."

"Why me? Is there no one else in this godforsaken place?"

"No. There isn't. At least, not anyone who's in the condition to drink."

Draco furrowed his eyebrows. Ginny had been so hard to handle that he hadn't noticed that everyone else was gone. "You mean…?"

"Yeah. Dead, dying, or fighting. Except you. You do realize that you are, perhaps, the only person who hasn't fought yet, right?"

"I –"

"You're going to regret it, not fighting."

"And you're not?"

"I _am_ fighting, Malfoy," Ginny snapped, gesturing at her bandaged arm.

"But how? They won't let you. Didn't they confiscate your wand, so you wouldn't kill me? What are you up to?"

"Have a drink, Malfoy. You'll regret it if you don't."

"I'll regret it if I do. That stuff – only a masochist would drink that stuff."

"Or a dragon. Draco, the dragon, right?"

That had been the first and last time she had ever said his given name.

"_You're_ a dragon." He took the glass. "I'm surprised you don't breathe fire on a regular basis, with the amount of this stuff that you drink." He took a swallow. It wasn't the burning of alcohol; it wasn't the scalding of a boiling liquid. It was something completely different, like liquid fire. He grimaced, and Ginny laughed.

"Not like Butterbeer, is it?"

No, it definitely wasn't. Butterbeer warmed you up. Firewhisky was entirely unpleasant. Draco coughed, and a single spark flew out of his mouth. "Not like Butterbeer," he rasped, and Ginny laughed again.

"Not like anything you'll ever taste again." She drained the bottle.

---

They were sitting at the kitchen table again. They seemed to do that a lot. The other inhabitants of the house were in no condition to venture into the kitchen, and it was unofficially their place. Actually, it had been Ginny's until Draco had stormed into it to stop her from drinking, but that had never worked out right.

"Fight with me, Malfoy," said Ginny suddenly.

"What?" Draco asked around a mouthful of baked potato.

"You were right, Malfoy. Your kind was right."

He had no idea what she was talking about. But then again, she was a chronic alcoholic.

"It's what you wanted, isn't it?"

"What's what I wanted?"

"Fighting. Against _them_."

Draco completely misunderstood. "Weasley, I don't want to fight them. You know this. I may not be one of them anymore, but my family and friends –"

"Not them, Malfoy, _them_."

"Them who? The werewolves?" His eyes grew round as he said this, and he almost choked. "Did a werewolf do that to you?" Draco pointed at the wound on Ginny's arm, which looked like a hole, as if someone had driven a stake – or a rather large claw – through it.

"No. You're so daft!" Ginny cried. "Do you want to fight or not?"

Draco couldn't determine if he was more puzzled or annoyed. "Do you want your potato or not?"

"This is your last chance."

"Could you pass the butter with the potato?"

"This is _our_ last chance."

Draco slammed his fist into the table. "If you could just explain what you're talking about!" Draco yelled, confused and infuriated. Then he speared the potato with his fork, out of frustration, and muttered, "I don't want to fight with you."

'I want to fight _for_ you,' he wanted to say. 'Not _with_ you, but _for_ you, because you shouldn't be fighting at all, not in your state.' But he couldn't say any of it. He couldn't, because he didn't understand half of _why_ he wanted to say that, to an alcoholic Weasley, of all people.

Ginny stared at him for a moment in a disturbing way, as if making a life-altering decision about him, then nodded, decision made, and stood up. "There's no more Firewhisky."

"Thank Merlin for that."

"No, Malfoy. There's no more Firewhisky. Ever." And she walked out of the kitchen and out of his life. Forever.

---

The next time he saw a Weasley, it was Ron, who could not see him back. His eyes were as clear a blue as ever, but his vision was anything but clear. In fact, it was nonexistent.

The second youngest Weasley spent about two weeks in various states of emotion. Sometimes he was upset, and went about the house smashing things, saying he should be out there and not in here.

Sometimes he pretended that nothing was wrong and amiably spoke to Draco, pretending that it wasn't a Malfoy that he was talking to.

Sometimes he was immersed in his own sorrow and stayed locked up in his room.

Other times, he became a hopeless optimist who convinced Draco to play wizards' chess with him. He played surprisingly well for someone who couldn't see the chessboard, and it took Draco an entire half hour to beat him.

The strangest thing was that Ron said it too, rather unexpectedly during the middle of a chess match. "You were right, Malfoy. Your kind was right."

It was what Ginny had said, word for word.

"What do you mean?"

"Me and Hermione. We're over."

"What?" It seemed that Draco said this a lot these days, especially to Weasleys.

"Yeah. We're over. Harry too. They don't understand."

"What?"

"Knight to E-3. Checkmate."

"_What?_"

---

"Do you have any idea what happened to Weasley?"

"You mean Ginny?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

"What?"

"She took my place. In the front lines."

"_What?_ She was hurt!" Draco exclaimed, uncharacteristically concerned. "Not only that, the whole time she was here, she didn't practice her magic! In fact, I think they took her wand with mine so we wouldn't kill each other."

"They didn't take it. She broke it. It was no use to her," Ron said simply.

"What?"

"When we finally allowed her to come with us, to destroy the last Horcrux, things went wrong, and Ginny sacrificed her magic. This was two months ago. I'm surprised you didn't know. Didn't you notice how Firewhisky never affected her? You know how it is with wizarding alcohol; it doesn't work if there's no magic to fuel its powers."

She was a Pureblooded witch; magic was her life. How did she survive like that? If she was so unhappy, why did she drink alcohol that couldn't get her drunk? Why not just Muggle whisky? It was sad, really, how the strongest drink in the wizarding world was powerless to Ginny, while a Muggle drink stewed her brains around. Then the most pitiful thought occurred to Draco: she probably drank Firewhisky only to consume its magic, to feel the magic inside of her, even if she couldn't do anything with it. She had just wanted to hang on to whatever magic she could. It was absolutely pathetic.

Draco didn't know what to say. He didn't know what to do. He felt like punching himself for being so stupid. He wanted to grab her and shake her and yell at her for not telling him, but she was nowhere around, and why would she tell him in the first place? She hated his guts.

"Well, she wouldn't need the wand anyway," continued Ron in a comforting tone, as if sensing Draco's anguish. "She's got a gun."

Draco found his voice. "And what, may I ask, is a gun?"

"It's like a wand, except Muggles use it, and the only thing it can do is kill or hurt. The Death Eaters love it. It's simplified magic." Ron suddenly turned towards Draco, gazing at a point just above his left ear. "Malfoy. You don't know, do you?"

"Know what?"

"Ginny wasn't supposed to know either, but she somehow found out. And she's been sneaking out to fight."

"What did she find out that made her want to fight without magical protection?"

Ron sighed heavily. "The war… it – well, Malfoy, the war changed."

"Changed?"

"Yeah. It's like this. Forget the Aurors, forget the Death Eaters, forget everything. It's all of us now. All of us, against _them_."

Draco almost screamed. "Them who?" he asked through gritted teeth.

"The Muggles."

---

It was a cold, rainy November night. Draco was tossing about in bed, having disturbing dreams about twisted black Muggle wands that tortured a helpless Ginny Weasley. He was reaching out to her, but he couldn't touch her. She was blazing with flames, and she was burning him, burning his heart.

Thankfully, sounds of shouting woke him up.

"– you should have protected her –"

"– I tried to stop her –"

"– all your fault –"

"– only thing we could do –"

"– wipe us out –"

"– it's called coexisting –"

"– they don't know how to –"

"– I'm one of –"

"– and you're not wanted here anymore –"

Then the door slammed and everything went silent.

When Draco went downstairs, he saw Ron sitting alone on a moth-eaten sofa, looking more distressed than ever. Ron, apparently, heard Draco come down. "It was Hermione. She brought some unpleasant news. My – never mind." Ron fell silent and ran a hand through his hair. It was a flaming red, certainly, but it wasn't quite like Ginny's – it didn't have the quality of molten gold combined with fire spun into silk. Draco wondered if he would ever see hair like hers again.

"Hermione's trying to play mediator with Harry," Ron finally said. "They think the Muggles will get rid of the Death Eaters, then let the rest of us live in peace. They won't. The Muggles don't give a damn who Harry Potter is. To them, he's nothing but a freak in glasses. We're all freaks."

Ron suddenly got up and stumbled his way to the stairs. "I know you said you wouldn't fight, but this is _your_ fight. You were always the one so obsessed about blood purity. Well now, the Muggles are trying to stamp us out. They've been snapping our wands and herding us into prison camps. Seamus calls it the Holocaust, whatever that is. I call it Hell."

"There's nothing I can do! What do you want me to do? Kill all the Muggles in the world? Even the Dark Lord couldn't do that. I don't even have my fucking wand. It got confiscated the moment I stepped in here. And I can't bloody use a fucking gun!"

"It's easy, Malfoy. Ginny learned how all by herself, and she was probably half-drunk at the time."

"Can she teach me?"

"No, Malfoy," Ron said very quietly, shoulders slumping, the very image of a war-weary, broken soldier. "Dead people don't teach others how to shoot guns."

---

It was impossible. No wizard had ever thought that the day would come when Muggle technology would beat magic. But it did. Even at the height of his power, the Dark Lord couldn't kill more than fifty people at once. But the Muggles had something called an atom bomb. It destroyed people by the hundred thousands.

A traitorous Muggle-born was all it took. Once the location was discovered, no amount of magic could save Hogwarts and the nearby Hogsmeade from the destructive force of the bomb, which the Muggles had the gall to name _The Magician's Nephew_.

The Muggles couldn't actually see the castle blowing apart to rubble, but they knew their bomb had worked. Witches and wizards lined up in front of the Muggle Ministry to surrender. And news spread quickly around the globe.

There was, of course, those who resisted, like Ginny Weasley and her brothers had once done. Most surviving Purebloods became terrorist witches and wizards, demanding Ministry officials for their freedom. But the Muggles resisted back. It was amazing what their technology could do. A Magical Resonance Detector was installed almost everywhere. Anyone singled out by the MRD was immediately arrested and taken to a camp.

The Muggles had their own little Dark Mark. Each witch or wizard was tattooed with a barcode, complete with identification number. That wasn't enough. If, for whatever reason, a wizard had to leave his containment camp, he had to wear a black band on his arm, imprinted with a blazing red 'D'. _Demons_, the Muggles called them. They didn't understand that demons were two feet tall with gray skin, yellow claws, red eyes, and a tail. Of course they didn't understand – they didn't want to.

---

Draco walked out of the liquor store and into the rain, clutching a bottle of Muggle whisky and pulling up the black band that kept slipping down his arm. He had paid fifty Galleons for that bottle of whisky. Normally, a good bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhisky was no more than five, but the impudent young cashier at the liquor store had refused to even acknowledge that Draco, who was demon number SVA9211C to the Muggles, was there until he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a bag of jingling gold coins. Gold was something that was universally understood.

Being a Malfoy, or at least having access to the Malfoy fortune, had its advantages. The Muggles were surprisingly able to control their prejudice where money was involved. After receiving enough Galleons to gold-leaf the streets of London, the Muggle Ministry officials allowed Draco to live outside of the filthy camps. Not that it meant anything, because no neighborhood would accept him, but at least he could breathe clean air.

For the next year, he traveled through most of Europe, ignoring the children who ran away from him if he came too near, and ignoring the disdainful looks he received from passersby. Sometimes he walked, sometimes he rode on a train. Once, there was even a kindly old man in a rusty station wagon who offered him a lift. Then, on a cold, rainy November day, Draco found his feet taking him back home. He returned to the Muggle grave that was marked 'Virginia Wesley, 1981-1998 – Victim of the London Demon attack.'

He wanted to cross it out – scratch it out with his bare fingers, if it was possible – and write, 'Ginevra Weasley, 1981-1998 – A true Pureblooded witch.' But he couldn't. If they found out whose body was occupying their precious gravesite soil, they'd dig her up and burn her, completely annihilating the last of her traces to grace the Earth.

Draco placed a sprig of evergreen on Ginny's grave. Flowers just weren't his thing; she would understand. Ginny would much prefer Firewhisky anyway, but he hadn't listened to her when she said Firewhisky would die. Now he regretted it.

She had agreed with him in the end. She had realized that the Muggles and Mudbloods just _weren't_ the same, and had fought them to maintain the freedom of wizardkind, even when she had lost her magic. She had fought until a Muggle grenade had extinguished the flame that was her life. It was ironic really, fighting fire with fire.

The whole thing was so ironic. The Muggle-loving Weasleys off to kill Muggles. The Muggles they had once protected killing them. A Pureblooded witch with no magical powers. And a Malfoy, grieving over a Weasley. A Weasley who, quite inadvertently, had taken his heart with her when she died.

He had no idea how it happened. He hated her, and she hated him, then after that first sip of Firewhisky, something had gone wrong with his head. While it was unable to affect Ginny in the slightest, it had done something to his head.

It was funny, really, Draco thought over his bottle of whisky.

Whisky. He almost burst into laughter right there. _Whisky_. A Malfoy drinking a Muggle beverage. Regular Muggle whisky, the only thing that could ever get Ginny drunk. Yet, half the bottle was gone and he was perfectly sober. It was fucking hilarious. So hilarious, in fact, that he threw the bottle with all his might, and it shattered against some Muggle's gravestone. Shattered into a thousand glittering pieces. Glittering like the teardrops that fell from the sky.

"What a waste of good alcohol," said Ron, settling next to Draco, though still a good distance away.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Draco snapped, although that was the very question he wanted to ask himself.

"She was nine when she first tried the stuff," Ron said in response. He smiled wistfully. "Someone brought it out for Christmas and forgot to put it away. Poor thing thought it was pumpkin juice. Next thing she knows, she's coughing up flames." He laughed.

And Draco laughed. Because he had done the very same thing. Because he could picture her breathing fire. Like a dragon. She had been more of a dragon than he had ever been. Draco, not a dragon. He snorted at the irony of it all. Then he was laughing again, great peals of laughter shaking his body, until the laughter turned to tears and he sobbed into the earth that was Ginny Weasley's grave.

And Ronald Weasley sighed and gazed at the dying sun with his unseeing blue eyes.

---

"Did you love her?"

"I honestly don't know."

"That's the closest thing to the truth you could've told me. Funny. I thought you hated everything Weasley."

"Funnier, how we spent so much time hating each other instead of the Muggles and Mudbloods."

Ron sighed. "Not all of them are bad, you know. Eckeltricity really is interesting in a way."

"Not all Malfoys are bad either. Actually, the Dark Lord wasn't really all that bad – well, except for the world domination part. He just hated the Muggles because he saw them for what they were. His ways of dealing with them were wrong, yeah. If it wasn't for his crazy schemes, there would've been no Death Eaters, and Potter and Granger wouldn't have run to the Muggles for help in the first place. But still, the Muggles are, well, they're _Muggles_."

"They're just scared. Of us. And we're scared of them."

"The irony is killing me."

Any observer would have noticed that the two boys were as different as could be. One was tall and gangly, with bright red hair and tan freckled skin. The other was somewhat shorter and more graceful, with soft blond hair and pale skin that was unblemished except for two tattoos: one, a bleak reminder of his past, and the other, a ghastly preview of the future. The boys were different, yet the same. The redhead shared the blond's second tattoo, and the boys wore the same black bands with their livid 'D's. Both were living in a world where they were unwelcome, and both were grieving the loss of the same girl.

"I don't think I'm ever going to come here again. It's partly my fault Ginny's this way."

"And it's my fault too, for not stopping her, or at least not going with her."

Ron shook his head. "No, when she makes up her mind, there's no stopping her. Did she know? About you, I mean."

"No. She might have, but I doubt it."

"I think she did."

"What makes you say that?"

"This." Ron tossed him a small bag, then stood up. "Have a good life, Malfoy." Then he laughed. "Good? Who am I kidding? We have barcodes, for Merlin's sake. See you in Hell, Malfoy. And I mean that in a good way. Maybe we could be friends down there. Share a bottle of Firewhisky. Ginny would love it." He grinned and walked off, stumbling occasionally in the muddy, rain-soaked dirt.

---

It was much later when Draco opened the small drawstring bag Ron had given him. The rain had stopped, and the moon was shining almost eerily bright. He reached inside and his fingers wrapped around warm, smooth glass. When he removed the object, he was surprised to see a tiny bottle full of a liquid that shone a golden red under the moonlight.

There was a note.

_Malfoy_

_This may be the last drop of Firewhisky in the world. The last drop of magic. Drink it for me?_

_Ginny_

"Don't even think about it," he said to the wind. "I hate that stuff. I'm Draco, a Malfoy, not a dragon. Funnily enough, the dragon here is you. Ginevra Weasley."

Draco poured the Firewhisky over the little sprig of evergreen, which ignited. The little fire grew and spread, and covered Ginny's grave. Draco smiled at the warm flames before he walked away, fingering the cold metal gun in his pocket. There were lives and magic to be avenged.

---

The next morning, the only thing left on the charred remains of Ginny's grave was a plaque that read 'Ginevra Weasley, 1981-1998 – A true Pureblooded witch. A dragon at heart.'


End file.
